


When Dreams Grow Dark

by Euphorion



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cunnilingus, Driving, Dryads - Freeform, F/F, Flashbacks, Thievery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 10:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13832355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: Sloane had never really known a whole lot about trees.The elven half of her family were all city elves, stretching back generations, and anyway she’d always been pretty sure elves knowing a lot about forests and stuff was a racial stereotype and not based in anything actually real. Certainly none of her elven friends growing up in Goldcliff had given a shit about nature, or communing with it, or hearing things on the winds. For her childhood and most of her adult life the only things anyone seemed to listen to were themselves, violence, and money.It wasn’t until she became a tree herself that she realized they could feel.





	When Dreams Grow Dark

Sloane had never really known a whole lot about trees. 

The elven half of her family were all city elves, stretching back generations, and anyway she’d always been pretty sure elves knowing a lot about forests and stuff was a racial stereotype and not based in anything actually real. Certainly none of her elven friends growing up in Goldcliff had given a shit about nature, or communing with it, or hearing things on the winds. For her childhood and most of her adult life the only things anyone seemed to listen to were themselves, violence, and money.

Even after she found the sash and gained access to the enormous, overwhelming power of the natural world, plants and animals and the thaumaturgic forces governing the elements were just tools at her disposal. The slithering, shifting voice of the relic wasn’t interested in allowing her to understand the world, or in serving as a conduit between her and the world’s needs and patterns and interlocking movements. She knew it all—a deep, calculating knowledge—but it was the knowledge of a chess player, not a dancer, a distant, strategic knowledge rather than an empathetic or visceral one.

It wasn’t until she became a tree herself that she realized they could feel.

+

Summer was nice. Dry—a little too dry—but she soon learned how to dig her roots down and pull the cool, deep-running water up through her veins and into the buds sheltering from the sun beneath her leaves. She was strong, and new, and growing; the people of Goldcliff came and exclaimed at her beauty.

As autumn began her blossoms faded and left her, and the buds swelled into small, hard cherries. They were too sour for the people passing by to bother with them, but the birds flocked to her, nestling ticklishly in her branches and delving into her fruits with sharp, snapping beaks. It didn’t hurt, exactly; nerves weren’t really a thing anymore and anyway a kind of natural separation had formed between her cherries and her core-tree-self, but it was odd, having tiny pieces of herself broken off and consumed. She let it happen, content; the birds would gorge themselves messily and her sticky seeds would cling to their feathers and spread her out across the city, just as the bees had done in the warmer months.

She was especially proud, in a detached sort of way, when she was visited by a single sleek, dark-eyed raven.

Winter took the last of her leaves, and reduced the warm-bursting-energy-life of her down to a heart-hearth of banked coals. She withdrew her awareness from her smallest twigs and branches, coiling into the center of her trunk. Here, surrounded by concentric rings marking her growth, she slept, and remembered.

+

“Sloane. You listening?”

She blinked herself out of her daydream, turning away from staring out across the city lights and meeting her companion’s eyes. “Yeah, I—sorry, yeah, I got it.” She tried to make her gaze convey confidence and not boredom. “I got it, Jek.”

Jek held her gaze for a moment, assessing. He was human, almost a head shorter than her, and she was certain he resented it—there was always a slightly condescending cast to his face that men often got when they were threatened by her. “Sure,” he said at last. “Just get in, get out.”

She nodded, cinching the harness tight around her hips and chest, leaned down and checked the laces on her boots of elvenkind, and then took a gratifyingly silent running leap off the edge of the roof.

For a single weightless second she hung, limbs spread to catch the air—not for aerodynamics, just for  _ fun, _ she always thought this is what birds must feel like, bellies open to the world below but safe and controlled on the wind—and then she dropped. She curled herself inward, one hand on the line above her, the other opening the pouch on her belt. The line jolted tight, and her fall turned into a swing, the side of the museum rushing up to meet her. She drew the small wooden wand from her belt and snapped it sharply in half, and the rushing wind in her face abruptly changed course, blasting away from her to dissipate against the window and slow her enough that she caught herself on the window ledge with only the tiniest grunt, rather than slamming painfully against the wall. She let the broken halves of the disposable wand fall to the street below, indistinguishable enough from any other twigs now that the magic in them had been released. She only had two left, but if she pulled this off tonight she could easily purchase a hundred more.

She would also, she reflected as she worked the thin blade of her knife between the window and its casement, never have to deal with Jek again. Not that she’d told him that.

Her knife caught the lock and she eased it open, breathing a sigh of relief when it released and she was able to push the window upward without any alarm sounding—that she could hear, anyway. Jek’s contact had told them that the museum, out of concerns over cost and the assumption that most people or things that could fly would have better things to do than break in and steal some ancient crap, only bothered to put alarm wards on the first few levels. She hoped they were right.

She pushed herself up onto the window-ledge and dropped silently into the museum, leaving her harness hanging where it was. If all went well she’d be returning here, and it would be the work of a moment to let Jek know to haul her up.

The museum around her was dark, but not dark enough to be a problem. She spent a moment checked for any sign of other wards or traps. The latter wasn’t likely—it was hard to set traps simple and easily disarmed enough for the hired muscle that worked as security for the place to un- and reset every day. And as for the former, she was no mage, and if there  _ were  _ hidden alarms there was no use delaying.

She ran lightly through the long halls filled with display cases, pulling up a mental image of the map she’d memorized earlier. She took a left, then another, then a right, flitting through identical rooms, impatient.

The statuette itself was small, carved clumsily—if it could be said to be carved at all—from black, reflective stone into the vague, lumpish shape of a horse. When she finally found the right room she crossed directly to the plinth without checking her corners, so the voice, when it came, blindsided her completely. 

“That’s an obsidian steed,” it said. A woman’s voice, gruff and low and unhurried. “Easily the most impressive thing in here. That thing can be a warhorse the size of a siege weapon, or whisk you away to the fuckin’ ethereal plane whenever you wanna go. Or, if you’re of a more pedestrian mind, it’ll get you a sweet 25k in gold.”

Sloane turned, trying to find the voice’s source, thinking fast. “Twenty-eight,” she corrected, stalling. Did the owner of the voice have a weapon trained on her? What kind? Was she a fellow thief? Did Jek’s contact double-sell his info? “Nice pun, by the way.”

“Oh, thanks, wasn’t sure you’d get it,” said the voice, and Sloane found her—a smaller block of shadow in the shadow of one of the pillars, broad, probably dwarven by the voice and the set of the shoulders. She checked the rest of the pillars, but it appeared at the owner of the voice was alone. 

“Who are you?” she asked. “You here for the steed?”

“I’m here for you, actually,” said the dwarf, and a broad-fingered hand emerged into the dim light holding a silver badge. “Goldcliff Militia. You’re under arrest.”

“Shit,” said Sloane, and broke left, dodging through the pillars in an attempt to lose her and circle back around to her exit.

Faster than should have been possible, the dwarf was keeping pace with her, and then she was darting  _ in front  _ of her, sweeping out a leg that Sloane only barely managed to leap over. She didn’t manage to see the palm-strike coming in time to do more than shift so it hit her shoulder rather than her temple, and she let out a gasp of pain at the power behind it. If it had landed as intended it would undoubtedly have been a knockout blow. She grunted, twisting, skidding awkwardly, launched herself sideways again, running misdirects through the pillars and paging through her mental list of whatever she had in her pouches. None of her bombs were useful here—she didn’t want to kill a cop _ ,  _ she didn’t want to kill  _ anyone _ , her bombs were for opening walls and vaults, not for combat. She could break another wind-wand but she was less than confident that she would be able to direct it properly in the dark against someone so unexpectedly fast—

She managed to put the slightest bit of wall between herself and her pursuer, ducking immediately into the deepest shadow behind a pillar. The window, still open, lay a quick sprint’s way down the corridor to her left. She slipped a coin from her belt, waiting for the shadowy figure of the dwarf to follow her around the corner, and then threw the coin as hard as she could across the room.

Almost before it hit the far wall with a  _ clang  _ she was running, blessing the perfect silence of her boots. She heard a bitten-off curse and then the sound of far less silent boots hitting marble as the cop resumed pursuit. She increased speed, flinging herself forward and through the open window into air—

A calloused palm wrapped around her wrist and yanked her sharply backward, and the two of them collapsed to the floor in a pile.

“Fucking hell, girl,” the cop said, sounding shaken, “I was just going to bring you in for questioning, no need to off yourself.”

“I wasn’t,” Sloane hissed, pulling free from her, “my harness—”

She glanced out the window to where her harness should have been, and was met only with city lights and distant stars. “Oh,” she said. “Shit.  _ Fuck,  _ my fucking partner, I’m going to  _ kill _ him—”

“Probably not his fault,” said the cop, sounding remarkably un-winded considering their chase. She was still in shadow, but Sloane could see the set of her shoulders, a sliver of her square jaw where the moonlight slanted across it. “The rest of my team is searching the roof by now, they may have already taken him in.”

Sloane pushed herself to a crouching position, eyeing her warily. “Right,” she said, “what happens now?” She flicked a wrist like she were fixing her sleeve, letting the cool steel of a dagger slide into her palm.

The dwarf’s hands went to her belt. “Now I take  _ you _ in. Civilly, preferably.”

“I see,” said Sloane, and tilted forward like she was going to push herself to her feet. Instead she slid the dagger through the laces of her boots, one and then the other, moving quickly, and then rolled forward so she was balancing on her hands, her feet slipping free of them.

“What,” said the cop, and then Sloane pushed herself backward til her feet met the wall above the window, the slippers she’d been wearing beneath her boots sticking fast. She hung there for just a moment, sideways, then gave the cop a wave, stepping carefully over the top frame of the window and running as fast as her slippers would allow along the wall of the museum and away.

Behind her, to her surprise, she heard low, delighted laughter.

+

Sloane threw her wagon into reverse, dropping back behind the guy that had been on her fucking heels for the last quarter mile, and pulled sharply upward on a lever at her side. The catch under her back seat released, and the skeleton of what would one day be a wing emerged from under her wagon, gliding outward and under the guy’s wheels. She twitched the lever again and the wing flapped sharply, flipping the wagon neatly over onto its hood. They’d be fine—Sloane had seen their airbag specs last week, and they were all wearing safety vests—so she didn’t watch it fall, accelerating immediately and screaming across the finish line in a cloud of dust. 

She pulled herself out of her wagon, adjusting the simple black cloth over her face so it worked to filter out the dust as well as to obscure her identity. It took a minute for the blaring of the pylons marking her opponent’s failure to clear from her ears, but then she heard it: a rush of voices, shouts and whistles and screams, buoying her up.

She jogged out into clean air, snapping off a salute to the crowds in the stands. They were cheering mostly for Katazz and his boys, she knew, but she saw one or two with black headbands tied around their heads, or holding up signs with her stylized black raven-face scrawled on them. She smiled under her mask and gave a little wave.

Something itched at her in her peripheral vision, something almost familiar but not quite, and she hadn’t gotten this far ignoring her instincts. She scanned the crowd again, looking for the almost-familiar face. Was it the human man wearing a threadbare wizard’s robe? The small boy at his side, with the round glasses and determined face, who appeared to be taking notes? No—in front of them, closer, right at the edge of the crowd—a dwarf woman, whose gaze met Sloane’s, appraising, appreciative.

“Hang on,” said Sloane, stepping up to her, too surprised to think about whether this was a good idea, “holy shit, you’re that cop.”

Out of uniform, out of the dark, she was remarkably pretty, nut-brown in both skin and eye with a cap of wild, darker curls—but it was unmistakably her, the frame of her shoulders the same as they’d been in the half-light of the museum, though now distractingly muscular beneath her sleeveless tunic.

Sloane forced her gaze back to her face to find the woman staring at her blankly. “Sorry, what?”

Sloane had a moment of unexpected disappointment that she hadn’t been so memorable, and then remembered the mask. She pulled it off, shaking out her hair, and the dwarf’s face shifted from confusion into a kind of laughing disbelief. “The art thief!”

Sloane spread her hands, smiling a little despite herself. “Prove it.”

“I mean, you did just admit to having met me the other night,” the cop pointed out.

Sloane shook her head. “Could have met you anywhere,” she countered. “Could have met you here.” She indicated the stands around her, the dust and sweat beginning to dry on her skin. 

She expected the cop to look guilty, or at least embarrassed, considering the illegality of the sport, but she just inclined her head, conceding the point.

Sloane regarded her curiously. “You a fan? An amateur, hoping to get into battlewagons?”

The cop snorted. “A little more than an amateur,” she said, with a hint of intriguing arrogance.

Sloane raised her eyebrows. “Oh?” she challenged. “How come you’re not out there with me, then?”

The cop ran a hand through her curls, making them bounce. “I’m still working on my rig,” she said. “I had one but it was puny—good for starting out, but not something that would get me wins.” She crossed her extremely impressive arms. “Not against you, anyway.”

Sloane cocked her head. “I didn’t even win.”

There was a hint of green in the cop’s brown eyes, right around her iris, that became more noticeable when she narrowed them. “You will.”

Sloane bounced on her toes a little at the compliment, and stuck out a hand. “Sloane.”

The cop blinked at her, and then grinned, wide and dazzling. “I’m Hurley.”

+

“We can’t keep meeting like this.”

Sloane froze, her hand inches away from the lock on the chest in front of her. “You’re joking.”

Hurley laughed her low, rich laugh. “Hi.”

Sloane started turning her hands over and examining them in the light filtering in through the window, not even bothering to check to see where Hurley was. She was small, and  _ fast,  _ and very good at this. She wouldn’t be found just by looking. “What, did you put some kind of magic tracker on me? Invisible, without the right eyeglass—”

“Nah,” said Hurley, “cool gadgets are more your jam. Guess I’m just lucky.”

Slowly, Sloane picked up the lock and started to pick it. “You take me in,” she warned, “I’ll tell your boss you’re into racing.”

Hurley hummed. Somewhere to Sloane’s left, and not moving. Sitting comfortably, maybe. As unbothered by Sloane’s presence as Sloane was attempting to appear that she was by hers. “A pretty good blackmail bid,” Hurley said, “except that no one would have any reason to believe a perp in cuffs who’s wanted for at least four larceny counts.”

The lock in Sloane’s hands clicked softly, but she didn’t move it to pull it open. She shifted left, hoping to obscure Hurley’s eyeline. “Maybe not at first,” she said. “Maybe not without proof, or corroborating witnesses.” She slipped the lock open silently and eased the chest open just enough to slip her hand inside. “I can name six people at least that saw you and I talking that day.”

She couldn’t; she knew maybe three of the other racers and all of them would deny they’d seen anything just to screw her over. But there was no reason for Hurley to know that.

There was a short pause, and then Hurley said, “why are you doing this?”

Sloane curled her fingers around the stones inside the chest, confused. “Since when do cops care about the reasons people break the law?”

“Since,” said Hurley, and then, “well, now, I guess.”

Slone shrugged, using the movement to mask the smaller one of her pulling her hand, loaded with stones, back out of the box. “Lots of reasons,” she said. “Money. Because it’s fun.”

“What’s the money for?” Hurley asked as Sloane slid the lock back into place. 

She turned to face where the voice was coming from and was surprised to see Hurley standing in the open, a small hand-crossbow in one hand. It was neither trained on her nor loaded, but Sloane had no doubt it would take less than a blink of an eye for it to be both.

The corner of Hurley’s mouth turned up. “You ever think it’s weird that you wear a mask in the races but not for objectively worse crime?”

Sloane ignored the question in favor of answering the first. “Living,” she said simply. “Racing.”

Hurley narrowed her eyes. “Those are two very different reasons, with two very different required budgets.”

Sloane spread her hands, both the stones and her thieves’ tools back up her sleeve and the chest clearly locked behind her. “Are they?” she asked.

Hurley’s smile grew. “Go on,” she said quietly. “Get out of here.”

Sloane inclined her head. She was about to flee when Hurley stopped her. “Hold up,” she said. “When’s your next race?”

Sloane raised an eyebrow at her. “You liked what you saw?” she asked. It came out teasing and indulgent, a flirtation that Sloane couldn’t bring herself to regret. She was elated, buoyed up on the pleasure of pulling off the theft right under Hurley’s nose.

It took months for her to think maybe she hadn’t, that maybe something in her answer had lead Hurley to let her believe she had. It took almost a year to change her mind back again.

“Not sure,” said Hurley, cocking her head. “Thought I’d give it another shot and find out.”

+

“Okay, when you said you wanted me to see what you were working on, this is  _ not  _ what I was expecting.”

Hurley grinned that wide, bright smile again, the one that made it look like she picked her teeth with the rays of the sun. “What did you expect?”

Sloane walked around the skeleton of the wagon, taking in its weight, the way the frame hugged the wheels, the potential for pure  _ power. _ “Something small,” she admitted. “Light on its feet, subtle, more about slipping around the competition than.” She stopped.

“Crushing them?” Hurley suggested.

Sloane let out a breath, laughter wrapped up in it, and laid a hand on the hood of the wagon. “She’s beautiful.”

“She is, isn’t she?” Hurley smirked. “Only girl I’ve been under in months.”

Sloane cast her a startled look, then turned it, awkwardly, into a chuckle. “I, uh, know that feeling.”

Hurley’s thick eyebrows shot up. “I thought you liked men.”

Sloane stared at her, mouth caught halfway between a disbelieving gape and an even more disbelieving laugh. “What the hell gave you that impression?”

Hurley rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, uh, the night we met—you said your partner, and then you said  _ he,  _ and I thought—”

Sloane shook her head rapidly. “No,” she said, “no, ew, no. Jek was my, like. Caper partner, and that only out of necessity—he made friends easier than me, for some unknowable reason, and I needed his contacts. Cut him off after he hung me out to dry at the museum.”

“Oh, okay,” said Hurley. “So. You, uh, you like girls.”

Was it Sloane’s imagination or were her cheeks a little darker than usual? She shifted a little closer to check, and Hurley didn’t move away from her. “I,” she said instead, “also? Me too.”

They were  _ definitely _ darker. Sloane wondered for a second if she kissed them whether they’d be warm, then quashed that thought before it made  _ her  _ blush, too. Just because she was muscled and hot and was into women didn’t mean shit about shit. But. Suddenly there was a door, and Sloane rarely passed a new door and didn’t at least test the lock.

She bit her lip, caught, unsure whether to move closer or break the tension off and go back to examining the wagon. “Yeah,” she said, “I figured. Your joke.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Sloane opened her mouth again, fully intending to say something innocuous about the work that needed to be done before Hurley’s ride was up and running. “I—”

“Will you race with me?” Hurley asked in a rush.

Sloane blinked at her. “Sorry?”

“Race with me,” Hurley repeated. She gestured to the wagon. “You probably guessed that this thing isn’t gonna run with just me inside, and that’s why I’ve been going to the races—recruiting, see, trying to find a team that’s good enough to be useful to me.”

Sloane tucked her hands in her belt loops. “And my work on the track convinced you I was one of the people you needed?”

Hurley shook her head. “No,” she said.

Sloane frowned, hurt. “No?”

“No,” Hurley repeated, “seeing you drive helped, but it was watching you steal shit that convinced me that you’re the  _ only  _ one I need.” She shook her head again, but this time in wonder, not negation. “My boss was convinced there were at least five of you pulling the jobs you and Jek were doing, and then once you dropped him? It’s wild I was ever able to find you again. You’re smart, you’re quick, you’re strong as fuck, and.” She met Sloane’s eyes. “Sloane. You’re goddamn  _ fearless. _ ”

Sloane failed entirely to keep her blush down this time. “Maybe I just don’t have anything to lose,” she said, less certain than she meant it. Less certain, in a way she hadn’t quite allowed herself to examine, that it was still true.

Hurley crossed her arms. “Plenty of idiots out there with nothing to lose,” she said. “Nobody I’ve seen who walks the line between  _ unafraid to die  _ and  _ violently determined to live  _ like you do.”

Sloane blinked at that. It was such an odd compliment, almost impersonally given but shearing through everything she tried to outwardly be and recontextualizing who she was into something—unique, unbelievable. Worthy of something, not because of a race she’d won or a job she’d completed but just. As herself.

She cracked her knuckles in order to have something to do with her hands. “Thank you,” she said, feeling like the words were inadequate but not having access to any others.

Hurley nodded. “So.”

Sloane drifted toward her. “So?”

Hurley bit her lip. “You wanna?”

_ Yes,  _ said Sloane inside her head.  _ Yes, please.  _ She worked her tongue around her mouth. “I mean, I dunno,” she said. “You’re not the only one with standards. I haven’t seen what  _ you _ can do.”

Hurley raised an eyebrow at her. “You want me to show you?”

Sloane swallowed, holding her eyes. “Yeah.”

“I don’t have a wagon,” Hurley said, not breaking their staring contest. “I cannibalized my old one for parts. And there’s no race for weeks.”

“We’ll take mine,” said Sloane. “Tonight. Meet me at the warehouse on Mine Street, around ten. Patrols are lightest—”

“I know when patrols are lightest,” Hurley broke in gently, “sometimes I’m on ‘em.” She smiled at Sloane’s embarrassed silence. “The warehouse at ten.”

Sloane cleaned herself up for it, feeling foolish but doing it anyway. She washed her hair and put little silver earrings in all seven holes in her ears, even the ones that protested from long disuse. She didn’t put on perfume, though—perfume was for marks and potential contacts, and Hurley wasn’t either of those things. Besides, she was pretty sure Hurley wasn’t the type to mind the smell of clean sweat should—well. Anything. Happen.

She did put on a suit that marks tended to be fond of, though, because she had nothing else that looked as good and still let her move. Besides, it was black, and that meant it was good for doing illicit shit after dark. The fact that it was open to nearly her navel was beside the point.

She got there early, opening up the bay doors of the warehouse and waited, leaning against the side of her wagon, for Hurley to show.

Hurley, if anything, had dressed  _ down,  _ but in a way that made Sloane’s mouth go dry. She was wearing a sleeveless vest short enough to show off her stomach and loose, comfortable-looking pants that settled willfully halfway down her wide hips. She looked like she’d dressed to open herself up to the night, as if that might improve her reaction time, as if she might be able to read something in the wind on her skin.

It made Sloane feel keyed up and dizzy and also horribly overdressed, until Hurley came close enough for her to see she was wearing eyeliner.

“Hey,” Sloane said, trying not to stare too obviously at—anything, any part of her.

She shouldn’t have bothered—she could almost  _ feel  _ Hurley’s gaze shift up her body, though maybe part of that was unintended; her eyeline was naturally level with Sloane’s chest, after all. There was nothing unintentional about the flicker of tongue in the corner of Hurley’s smile, though, or the heat in her gaze when their eyes did meet. “Hey.”

Sloane opened the driver’s side door and gestured her inside. By the time she’d taken her own seat, behind her in the canoe-form of the main carriage, Hurley had already taken stock of the inside of the wagon, the array of the controls. She gave a low whistle. “Damn,” she said. “Now I see what you’ve been using all your ill-gotten gains for.”

Sloane leaned forward, hooking her chin over the shoulder of her seat. “I’d say most of them were rather well-gotten,” she said mildly. “What’s that you said earlier?” She pitched her voice lower, doing her best impression of Hurley’s gruff tone. “It’s wild you ever found me.”

Her eyes were trained sideways, and she could see the curve of Hurley’s cheek shift as she smirked. “Note to self,” she said, “don’t compliment Sloane, she’ll never fucking let you live it down.” She gripped the steering wheel in one hand, the other going to the ignition, ready to flip the switch to awaken the arcane core nestled in the nose of Sloane’s canoe. “Ready, pretty bird?”

Sloane had no time to answer or wonder if she were talking to her or the wagon, because suddenly the world was wind.

Hurley ran her wagon like a trained animal. Under her hands it leaped out of the warehouse and spun sharply almost in a full circle before racing down the street, not away from the center of town like Sloane had intended but right into the thick of it. She dodged around pedestrians and commercial vehicles alike, skidding up the cobblestone hill right in front of the Goldcliff Trust and off the other side, the wagon’s wheels leaving earth for a weightless moment before setting back down—not with a crash, but with a shuddering smoothness, the walls of the canoe rattling but none of Sloane’s bones jarred. Hurley’d found the counterweights and matched their release perfectly to the arc of their flight. 

Sloane shook her head as Hurley laughed, flipping off an empty militia patrol wagon and then cursing when it suddenly swarmed to life, two gnomish cops appearing from seemingly nowhere and peeling out of the alley after them. 

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” yelled Hurley, taking a hair-pin left. It seemed less like cursing and more like mantra as she continued to drive, or an anti-mantra, hyping her up rather than keeping her calm.

Sloane pushed herself further up so she could lean over the back of the seat and murmur in her ear, “Take us to the cliff.”

Hurley obeyed, zig-zagging her way out to the outskirts of town, and Sloane stayed curled over the back of her seat so they were facing the wind side by side. The cops were still on them, though they weren’t close enough to do anything yet. “Sloane,” Hurley said, shouting over the wind, “out by the cliff we’ll be sitting ducks—we won’t be able to lose them.”

“You know Direshark Gorge?” Sloane asked her, speaking right against her ear to be heard. “Head there.”

The eponymous cliff of Goldcliff didn’t shear off perfectly straight and fall to the deserts below—there were various irregularities, outcroppings, and stone fjords at its edge. The largest was a great wedge of stone thrust out into empty air, like the prow of a ship setting sail eastward from just north of town. It was split down the center by a gorge, only about thirty feet wide but several miles long, itself not smooth-cut by water or wind but jagged, so that from above it looked like it was filled with sharp, gnashing teeth. 

Hurley made it there in record time, the cops falling further behind but still determined and buoyed, no doubt, by what they saw as an idiot move. They were the only moving thing out here bigger than a rabbit, not to mention the  _ noise.  _ A blind rat could have followed them.

They were coming dangerously close to the edge of the gorge, and Hurley started to turn and head around the long end, but Sloane leaned forward, closing her fingers over Hurley’s on the steering wheel and guiding her so they continued straight forward. “No,” she said. “Keep going.”

Hurley gave a little shaky laugh. “Sloane,” she said, as the cliff rushed up to meet them. “Sloane—”

“When I say now,” Sloane said firmly against her jaw, “you pull the lever next to your seat.”

“What’s it do?” Hurley asked. 

Sloane said nothing, keeping her hand lightly on top of Hurley’s, not actually exerting any control over the wagon at all. She could feel the muscles of Hurley’s face move where they were pressed cheek to cheek, could feel when she clenched her teeth—not in fear, but in wonderful, furious determination.

The front wheels of the canoe met air and Sloane cried, “Now!”

Hurley pulled the lever, and the full, waxed-canvas wings snapped out on either side of the canoe, catching the air. The wagon sailed out, gliding like a flying squirrel neatly across the gorge. They landed slightly more ignominiously this time—both Hurley and Sloane had been too busy shrieking with terrified, exhilarated laughter to deal with counterweights—and Hurley grabbed the wheel before they spun out and peeled off into the desert. Sloane glanced back at the frustrated militia wagon, perched on the edge of the gorge. She wondered if they would start the laborious trip around, or decide they had better things to do than chase down some suicidal joyriders.

Hurley looped them to a stop a safe distance into the desert and cut the engine. Here, immobile, the sleek black canoe would fade into a vague shape against the stars, if anyone were even still looking.

Sloane shifted sideways, balancing along the side of the canoe, her arm propping her up on the dashboard so she could look at her companion.

“God,” said Hurley, burying her face in her hands. “ _ God. _ ”

For one, devastating moment Sloane thought she might be crying, or angry, but then she raised her head to stare wildly at Sloane, her eyes huge and shining. “That was fucking  _ amazing, _ ” she crowed. “That was incredible—”

Sloane laughed, relieved beyond belief. “I’m just glad they worked.”

Hurley stared at her. “You hadn’t  _ tested  _ them?”

Sloane raised her shoulder in a shrug. “I only finished them last week.”

“Oh my god,” said Hurley, horrified, chuckling. “You could have killed us.”

“Me?” Sloane asked archly. “You were the one driving.”

“Per your instructions!” Hurley shot back. “I trusted you!”

Sloane cocked her head. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “You did.” She reached out, running her fingers down Hurley’s jaw.

Hurley took a breath, the wild excitement and accusal in her eyes shifting, slightly, to something else, taking on that heat that they’d left behind in the warehouse but hadn’t, the heat that Sloane had been trying to keep with them in the press of her mouth against Hurley’s ear, the slide of her fingers over Hurley’s knuckles. “So,” Hurley said, slow.  “I pass? You want me?”

Sloane’s lips parted of their own accord. “You can’t keep saying shit like that,” she muttered, her fingers tracing down the thick column of Hurley’s neck.

Hurley shifted forward, her eyes flickering over Sloane’s face. “Why not?”

“Because I’ll get the wr—”

Hurley lunged forward, cutting her off with her mouth, and Sloane felt herself go boneless with released tension, a singing note sounded weeks ago and growing ever louder suddenly going silent. Now there was just Hurley, and her throat against Sloane’s palm, and her tongue against Sloane’s tongue, and the quick staccato of her breath through her nose as Sloane kissed her back, hard.

“Sorry,” Hurley said when she finally pulled away, voice wry, “were you about to say ‘get the right impression?’ Because anything else might indicate that you  _ hadn’t  _ noticed I’ve been flirting with you since the moment I first saw you, and you, pretty bird, are not that dumb.”

“Shut up,” grumbled Sloane. “You thought I was fucking  _ straight  _ until this morning.”

“Touche,” muttered Hurley, and Sloane laughed soft against her mouth.

+

The first time they won a race together they kept going, driving way, way out into the desert, and Sloane didn’t even try to fight the wild, pulsing, joyful need in her veins. She threw open her door and pulled Hurley out, hands in her hands and then on her hips, guiding her up onto the hood of the wagon and stepping up between her legs to capture her mouth. Hurley sighed happily against her, muttered “yeah,” when Sloane’s hands dropped to the laces on her vest, licked hungrily into her mouth when Sloane slid a slow, careful dagger through those laces, the cool flat of the blade just barely slipping against her skin. The vest fell open and Hurley tangled her blunt-nailed fingers in Sloane’s hair as she lowered her head to kiss and mouth at her breasts, weigh them in her hands. 

She pulled back and just looked at Hurley, reclining half-naked on the hood of her wagon like a queen on a throne, her skin gleaming warm and gold and red with sunset light.  Her eyelashes fluttered, her teeth working her full lips as Sloane ran slow, reverent thumbs over her nipples.

“If you just keep staring at me I'm going to have to take matters into my own hands,” Hurley warned, and then hissed when Sloane twisted her nipple for it, laughing.

They ended up in the back of the wagon, both of them too pragmatic to deal with full nudity and sand, electing instead for too-close quarters that meant Sloane was awkwardly half-sitting against the back of her seat, her fingers scrabbling for purchase on the canoe walls as Hurley fucked her open with two broad fingers, her wide, enthusiastic tongue on her clit. She spat a crescendo of curses to a sky now filled with stars, her heels digging into the muscles of Hurley’s back.

Hurley curled upward, wrapping arms that still trembled from her own orgasm around Sloane’s neck. Sloane clutched at her, her wild breathing finally slowing, swallowing against the shuddering pounding of her heart. 

Hurley smoothed her hair out of her face with one calloused palm, her thumb running down the curve of Sloane’s nose, under her eye, back over her eyebrow, her touch light and steady and the most soothing thing in the world. “Still feel like you have nothing to lose?”

Sloane shook her head, emphatic but unable yet to find words, pulling Hurley closer and burying her face in her neck.

+

Spring came, and with it the blossoming of a consciousness here in the tree’s heart with Sloane, a warm, familiar voice, curling around and through her own. She felt Hurley wake up, felt her spread her awareness out into the thinnest of their branches, checking every corner like she was casing a crime scene.

_ Oh,  _ she said at last.  _ We’re a tree. _

_ Yeah,  _ said Sloane, if what was passing between them could really be called speech. It was more like a pulse of thought, drifting through her consciousness to be noticed like wind was to be noticed, or sunlight.  _ Hi. _

It wasn’t entirely accurate—more accurate would be to say they were two trees, entwined, the shapes of their old bodies still visible as knots and curls of wood below. Sloane didn’t like going down there, didn’t like touching the reminders of how she’d gotten here. Better to stay up in the light, only venturing below if she needed to dig her roots down deeper into the soil. 

_ Hi, _ said Hurley.  _ Um. How are you? _

Sloane couldn’t laugh, anymore. This was the first time she missed it.  _ Okay,  _ she said.  _ Summer was nice. A raven came to eat our cherries. I’ve been remembering things. I missed you. _

She meant while Hurley was sleeping and she meant before that and she meant all her life, every moment that wasn’t now with Hurley wrapped around-among her close as thought and she meant now when she had no arms to hold her; and all of those things, because speech was not speech, were as loud as what she actually said.

_ You can hold me,  _ Hurley said, beckoning her downward.  _ Down here, you’re here and I’m here. _

Sloan shivered in the spring wind, her buds striving against the cold but not yet ready to bloom.  _ No,  _ she said,  _ no, no. _

_ Come down,  _ said Hurley again.  _ Come down and finish remembering, it’s going to be okay. _

_ Down there I hurt you,  _ Sloane said desperately.  _ Down there you’re dead. _

_ No,  _ said Hurley,  _ down here is where we figure out how to live. _

Reluctantly, despairingly, Sloane let her consciousness sink into wood that once had been flesh, been blood, been bone, and continued to dream.

+

She was standing on the edge of Direshark Gorge, only it was different, wider, wilder. She could feel its pulse run up through the bottoms of her feet. The shifting of stone, the clatter of pebbles bouncing down new rock faces. The rolling that the earth wanted to do, if only she let it. She could let it. How easy that would be. How natural. How clean.

“Sloane!”

She turned, the wind picking at the feathers of her mask. Hurley jogged up to her, her face white with worry and horror. “What happened out there?” she asked, stopping a few feet from her, not closing the distance between. Maybe she understood better than Sloane gave her credit for. Maybe she knew that distance was insurmountable now. 

“We won,” Sloane said.

Hurley shook her head.  “Katazz and his boys—”

“They lost,” Sloane said patiently. “I’m not sure where you’re confused.”

Hurley stepped forward, and Sloane cocked her head. It was just like her to do this—to assess, to understand the impossible, and then stubbornly attempt it anyway. 

“I don't understand what's happening to you, “ Hurley said, like she thought Sloane could explain it if she just asked. “I don't understand how you're doing this,  _ why  _ you're doing this.”

Sloane shook her head.  “You never did,” she said. “I thought you had, that time you let me go, but you never did.” Her fingers toyed with the sash at her waist. “It's freedom,” she said. “This power. It’s freedom from everything that contains and controls and constrains us, from—from money, from hunger.”

She twitched her pinky and the ground next to Hurley split, a perfect green shoot rising to her shoulder, splitting, flowering, fruiting in the space of a breath, a heavy bunch of grapes brushing her bicep, perfect and full and ripe. Hurley raised her fingers to it, then hesitated, pulling back, as if it might harm her.

Sloane almost laughed, but found she had no taste for it. “It saves us from want,” she insisted. “From need. I don’t—I don’t  _ need  _ anything anymore, Hurley. I can do anything.”

“You don’t need anything,” Hurley repeated, her voice odd.

Sloane spread her hands. “I can feel the  _ ocean, _ ” she said. “I’ve never even seen the ocean—it’s gotta be thousands of miles from here, I never even dreamed of seeing the ocean, but I can feel it. The heartbeat of it, Hurley, like the pulse of the whole world.”

“Right,” said Hurley, staring away from her, her hand on the back of her neck. “Well. It’ll be hard to find a team good enough to run my wagon in time for the next race, but I’ll hold some auditions, see who’s an up and comer—”

Sloane blinked at her, slipping a little from her trance. “What do you mean?”

Hurley’s jaw shifted forward, and with a start Sloane saw tears in her eyes. “I will not,” Hurley said steadily, and then she wrenched her gaze forward, as if meeting Sloane’s eyes took superhuman effort. “I will not  _ race  _ with someone who did what you did today,” she ground out. “Seven people were hurt, badly hurt. Katazz broke his  _ spine,  _ and you’re standing there talking about oceans and heartbeats and offering me magic  _ fucking  _ grapes!” She crushed the bunch in her fist, juice and pulp running through her fingers and dripping to the sand like blood. 

Sloane stared at it, watched as within seconds a crowd of ants gathered around it. Safari beasts at a watering hole.

Hurley took a gasping breath, drawing Sloane’s eyes back up to her face. It was wet, tears dripping off her jaw, but her eyes were blazing. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you’re not Sloane.”

+

Summer thunder cracked overhead, and Sloane shivered, her twigs twisting and shaking in the wind, gripped by a sudden terror. Were her dreams slipping through to reality, calling storms down upon her, some leftover power of the sash still gripping her?

Whatever it was she was caught, tumbling, rain and memory lashing at her: she was curled shaking and alone in a deep crevice of her own making, the earth struggling to hold and comfort her. She was standing on the top floor of the Goldcliff Trust, vines choking the doorways, three figures across from her, bleeding out against the marble floor—an elf, a man, and a dwarf, a dwarf she didn’t know but that her power somehow did _.  _ She was no longer herself but a towering, green-vine  _ thing  _ at the center of a tornado, and she was burning, burning, burning.

She was herself again, but wrong, sharp and wild and half-mad with pain, and Hurley was throwing herself headlong and unprotected onto her thorns.

She was herself again, just her, and Hurley was in her arms, warm but going cold, her skin turning black, her veins a latticework of silver. 

She took a breath, and another, and then Hurley was brown again, and she was brown, the rough mottled brown of bark and wood, and she was breathing, and she had a body—tree but not tree, wood but not wood, lungs to breathe with and a heart that beat, her upper branches blossoming again with summer flowers but they were a piece of her moving self, now, her roots retreated and twisted and knotted into something remarkably like feet.

She looked up. The dark overhead was no longer a natural storm, but something worse, black and shot through with unnatural rainbow light, like nothing she had ever known even when everything in the world breathed through her. 

_ Sloane! _

She looked at Hurley, at the beautiful flowering thing that Hurley now was, but she had no chance to drink her in because suddenly all was light, and then, at her base, knocking against what were newly again knees, was a child. She was small and dwarven and squinting, squinting and shivering against Sloane’s knees, cowering away from—

Sloane caught the sword as it swung, wrenching it away from the shadowy warrior, and then Hurley wrapped herself around the figure with the groaning of an old-growth forest and crushed it tight til it dissipated into nothing. There were so many of them, strange shadowed creatures whose story was unfolding in her head as she moved, whose lost, dead worlds were settling into the rings of memory inside her alongside her own life. She concentrated, drawing from the water beneath her to grow herself a knife-like branch in each hand and face off against the Hunger. 

Pity and anger and joy and sorrow warred in her as she fought them off, as she learned them. They had once been people, some of them, all of them beings of some kind, consumed, like her, by a power they didn’t understand. Seduced, like her, by a meaningless world: a world where nothing mattered because nothing hurt, where need and its satisfaction were both empty and endless. A world she felt, now,  _ knew,  _ now, to be a lie.

She pulled her branch-dagger from the skull of a shadow and watched Hurley kneel by the dwarf girl, watched her smile. “You’re safe, now,” she reassured her, and raised her eyes to Sloane’s. Her curls were gone, replaced by a canopy of blossoms, but her eyes were the same as they’d always been: warm and brown with just that touch of green around her iris, the gold-green of sap and sun and the heart of all growing things. 

Hurley smiled. “We’re all safe now.”

Sloane reached out and took her hand.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't let femslash february go by without writing these two or my lesbian card would be revoked
> 
> this is my first hurloane fic so pls let me know your thoughts!


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